Kenny Comes Over

Kenny Wayne Shepherd will be returning to the UK in October and November for a run of shows in support of his upcoming album ‘Lay It On Down’, out on July 21st via Provogue/Mascot Label Group.

The modern Blues torchbearer will play 5 shows across the UK, including the London Bluesfest (Co-Headline with Gov’t Mule) at the Indigo O2 on October 28th. These shows will follow Shepherd’s headlining set on the Country Outlaw Stage at this years Ramblin’ Man Fair.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd is reaching unstoppable momentum – the proof is all over his eighth solo album, Lay It On Down. As a renowned hot-rodder, it’s apt that Shepherd’s musical career has no reverse gear. Awards, acclaim and platinum album sales flash by in a blur, vanishing in the rear-view mirror. For this questing musician, the focus is always the horizon, the next challenge, the new songs, the crowd out front stamping their feet. “We’re still breaking new ground, not just repeating ourselves,” notes the standard-bearer for modern blues. “Every album is representative of the things that are going on with me right now. Every album is another page in the book.”

In January, when Shepherd and his band entered the Echophone Studios in Shreveport, Louisiana, the mission statement was nothing if not ambitious: the greatest songs of Shepherd’s career. No more. No less. “The point of this album,” he says, “was that I wanted to put a heavy emphasis on the songs themselves and the writing behind them. I wanted each song to really stand on its own with the songwriting, the music, the words.”

Lay It On Down began when he headed South to write alongside the cream of Nashville. “I’ve been pretty busy over the past several years, between my band and The Rides,” he adds. “But when I got gaps in my schedule here and there, over the last year-and-a-half, I’d make trips to Nashville to write songs for this new record. Some people I’ve written with my entire career, like Mark Selby and Tia Sillers. Then there were some new people, like Danny Myrick, Dylan Altman and Keith Stegall and my co-producer,Marshall Altman.”